


Cutting Strings

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Gauda Prime, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Season/Series 04, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A shock and an electric shock cause Avon to take refuge in someone else’s personality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cutting Strings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnonEhouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/gifts).



> The central idea is actually Elviaprose's (thank you. Your help is much appreciated), though I flatter myself that I managed to wring a lot of additional pain out of it.

“Avon,” Orac said one day, “I have at last succeeded in tracing Blake’s line through the pattern of infinity. I know not only where he is, but also what he is doing and what he has been doing for the past two years.”

“ _And_?” Avon said, forgetting, in his excitement, that this was not the sort of question that Orac generally answered. Fortunately Orac seemed to have forgotten this too.

“And I have also predicted that you will not like the answer,” Orac said.

“I don’t expect to,” Avon said. Blake, he knew, would undoubtedly be somewhere awful: somewhere he was particularly needed, which meant somewhere particularly hopeless and corrupt. Either that or he would be settled down with Jenna, the whole revolutionary business behind him now he was a father and had a job in a factory.

Another horrible thought struck Avon, as they frequently did now he had no reason not to expect the worst in every scenario. What if Servalan had been telling the truth? He’d tried not to believe it after the initial pain had passed enough to allow rational thought, but with Orac’s ambiguous words hanging in the air, the fear gripped him again.

He shook Orac’s case like he might have shaken Vila’s shoulders to get him to talk. “Is he dead, Orac? Is Blake dead?”

“No,” Orac said. “He is alive.”

“Well,” Avon said, letting go of Orac’s case, finger by finger, “that’s all right then. After all,” he said whimsically, “how bad could it be?”

Orac told him.

*

 _A bounty hunter?_ Avon repeated to himself for the eighth time since Orac had passed on the news of Blake’s current occupation only ten minutes earlier. Blake, the hero of the revolution, man of the people, infuriating know-it-all and reckless, relentless do-gooder was _selling people for money_.

It was so obviously, ludicrously wrong that Avon had shouted at Orac to give him so proof if the idiot box was going to make accusations of that sort, and Orac had shown him a viz report of Blake as he was now. It had been recorded in one of the Federation’s detention centres, and showed Blake, dirty and scarred, and smiling as he handed a bound man into Federation custody.

“It’s a trick,” Avon had told Orac. “That is _not_ Blake. That man is _not_ – _Blake_. Either that or... or they got to him. He _has_ been adjusted before.”

“I have considered all of these possibilities,” Orac had replied. “There are no records of Blake being taken into custody and adjusted, or I would have picked up on them. And this is where Roj Blake’s trail ends – I did not simply search for men who _looked_ like Roj Blake. I have sifted the paths-”

“Sift _harder_ ,” Avon had snarled, and pulled Orac’s key from its slot. 

“It’s a trick,” he told himself, the sharp edges of Orac’s key digging into the palm of his ungloved hand. But he knew that Orac must be right. Blake was must be a bounty hunter. Avon hadn’t expected this, this particular betrayal, but after Anna and after Tynus, he _had_ expected Blake to let him down. But not like this, _never_ like this.

He began absently opening the panels that housed the circuitry for Xenon Base’s non-vital functions, stuck a hand in and ripped out several connections. It felt good to destroy things. Not Orac – the thing was too valuable – but these systems that he’d worked on carefully night after night, yes – he could destroy them, and he would.

Avon grasped another handful of cables and yanked them free. The lights in the recreation room flickered and then went back on. In the nights when he’d had nothing to do, Avon had built back-up circuits for everything, even the non-essential systems.

How was it, he thought bitterly as he located the back-up for the lights and yanked it out, that he could be so good at some things, so perceptive about what was broken and needed to be fixed with some things, and so bad at reading people? Blake, Anna, Tynus. His gifts had not protected him from _any_ of them. Why couldn’t he have been something useful, like a pyschostrategist?

The others had noticed the lights and entertainment units going off around the base by now. He could hear Dayna shouting his name and Tarrant asking whether he’d gone mad.

 _Yes_ , Avon thought to himself. _I probably have. Or perhaps I was never sane._

He stuck his hand vengefully back into the increasingly exposed wiring of Xenon Base, and jerked as electricity crackled through his arm.

He slumped to the floor as Tarrant and the others arrived.

*

Tarrant had been having a relatively good day by Xenon Base standards. That meant he hadn’t been woken up at the crack of dawn by Avon wanting him ready to fly half way across the galaxy on some pointless quest. No, this time, they weren’t due to fly out until the afternoon, and the quest had a reasonable chance of success. There had also been hot water in the shower, Vila hadn’t eaten all the pancakes at breakfast, and Dayna had agreed to show him how to use the new weapon she’d created – but not _on_ him, which was a definite improvement. Then the lights had started to go out.

Vila’s head had appeared round the doorway a moment later. “Avon’s pulling the place apart,” he’d explained. “ _Well_? Isn’t anyone going to stop him?”

Avon had stopped himself, though, before they’d managed to reach him. Now he was lying in an unflattering heap, his hair fluffy with electricity.

“Is he dead?” Vila asked over Tarrant’s shoulder.

Tarrant pointed at where Avon’s chest was obviously rising and falling. “He’s _breathing_.”

“Just wishful thinking then,” Vila said.

“Is he still connected to the power?” Dayna asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tarrant said.

“Right,” Dayna said. “Well, in that case-” She leant forward and smacked Avon hard across the face.

“What’s going on?” Soolin’s voice said from the door. “The lights in my room went out. Avon hasn’t installed a timer, has he? That’s the last thing we need.”

“No, he’s unconscious and Dayna’s slapping him,” Vila explained.

“Really,” Soolin said. She came closer and crouched down with the others. “Have you drawn lots yet, or can I go next?”

“I’m just trying to wake him up so we can ask him what happened,” Dayna explained. “It could be something really-”

“Excuse me,” Avon said, “but, if you’re going to hit me again, would you mind aiming for my shoulder or my arm? I’m afraid I’m rather vain about my face.”

“You can say that again,” Soolin muttered.

“Oh well. It was nice while it lasted,” Vila said as Dayna and Tarrant helped Avon sit up. “Tell him to turn the food machines back on first,” he said and wandered off before Avon could exercise any of his clearly considerable wrath in Vila’s direction. Soolin had similarly drifted away now the slapping part of the evening had ended.

“What happened here, Avon?” Dayna said.

“Rather unusually, I don’t know,” Avon said. “I seem to have been electrocuted, but that’s almost all I can tell you – _except_ that you seem to be suffering from a misapprehension regarding my identity.”

Tarrant and Dayna exchanged glances. “What misapprehension?” Tarrant said. “If you mean that we were worried about you, despite what a bastard you are-”

“I don’t mean that at all,” Avon said, “although it’s kind of you to say so. No, what I meant was that the young lady earlier addressed me as Avon. I assume,” he said, turning to Dayna, “that you believe me to be the infamous rebel criminal, Kerr Avon? Is that correct?”

“You _are_ Avon,” Dayna told him.  “Though I’m not too sure about infamous.”

“Ah. That is where you’re wrong,” Avon said. “Twice, in fact. Avon is extremely infamous – in the certain circles, of course. As for me, my name is Nik Carnell. Perhaps you've heard of me."

*

“Now, assuming that I am willing to accept your theory as viable,” Avon said almost three hours later.

“It’s _not_ a theory,” Tarrant said through his teeth for the seventh time.

“-are you at least willing to _consider_ mine?” Avon finished. “I see by your earlier response that you are not. It’s awfully closed minded of you, but what is one to expect from an FSA education?”

Tarrant wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up with the job of babysitting Avon through his trauma. Vila and Soolin had sloped off before they’d understood how bad the situation was, but Dayna could have stayed. She’d managed an hour or so, but then left claiming she’d left the timer of a bomb ticking. Avon had suggested to Tarrant that this was probably a lie, a deduction he seemed rather pleased with. Tarrant hadn’t bothered to respond, although he could have told Avon that of _course_ it was a lie, but Dayna was a fast runner and he hadn’t thought he’d be able to catch her.

Over the previous three hours, Avon had attempted to prove he was who he now said he was by attempting to make other deductions about the base and its inhabitants. As Tarrant had tried to tell him, this wasn’t particularly impressive since Avon obviously had all that information, but Avon’s spirits were impossible to dampen.

“Orac has explained what happened,” Tarrant said, trying to keep control of his temper. “It all seems pretty straightforward to me. You had a traumatic piece of news,” Orac hadn’t told him what it was. Apparently Avon had asked him not to before he’d gone crazy, “and reacted badly to it. Orac has also made a scan of your brain, which I’m afraid matches _Avon’s_ brain, _not_ that of Nik Carnell.”

“I never said that it didn’t,” Avon said. “In fact, I believe I said that I was at a loss to explain how it had happened. I merely suggested that my consciousness had been exchanged with that of your, hm – no, he’s not a friend, is he? _Associate_ , perhaps. Avon. One way of proving it would be to contact the man currently in my body and find out who he is.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Tarrant said. “You see, if you’re wrong, then all I’d be doing would be letting one of Servalan’s minions know that that you’re insane.”

“ _Minions_?” Avon said. “Well, I suppose I do deserve that, I did work for her... once and very briefly – but you should know that I’ve since been banished from the Federation. I’m just as much of a renegade as you are. You can ask Orac – it’s public record.”

“ _Sorry_ , but public banishment only makes me trust Carnell _less_ ,” Tarrant said. “If he _did_ want to infiltrate our organisation-”

Avon laughed: a polite but mocking chortle that was nothing like his usual mirthless bark or mad cackle. “What _organisation_?”

“It’s _your_ organisation,” Tarrant said, for a moment more irritated with Avon’s dismissal of everything they’d achieved than he was anxious to keep Avon from thinking he was the leader. Essentially by now he was, and Tarrant had accepted that. “If we’re a disorganised, infamous mess, then it’s your fault. And my point still stands – if Carnell wanted to infiltrate Xenon Base, then spreading a rumour that he’d been banished is exactly what someone like him would do. And you, Avon, could have easily found that information about Carnell using Orac, so don’t think I’ll take it as proof of your new identity, either.”

“You wound me,” Avon said.

“Keep talking and I will,” Tarrant said. “With my FSA-trained fist, in the middle of your face.”

“I did say I’d prefer the shoulder,” Avon said reproachfully.

Fortunately the wall-comm beeped before either of them could say anything else. Tarrant slid off the table he’d been sitting on and crossed to the comm. “Tarrant,” he said into it.

“It’s Soolin,” Soolin’s voice said. “Any joy with our erstwhile leader?”

“If anything he’s worse,” Tarrant told her, trying not to look at Avon in case he was making a comedy ‘hurt’ expression.

“Have you tried re-electrocuting him?” Soolin suggested. “At worse he’d die of it, but that still might be an improvement.”

“Give me a few more hours of this, and I’ll consider it,” Tarrant said. 

“Well, if you decide to do it, let me know, and I’ll tell Maura not to expect him. Otherwise – any thoughts on what we should do?”

“ _Damn_ ,” Tarrant said, grimacing against the grill. “That’s today, isn’t it? I’d forgotten all about it.”

They were due to meet an archivist, who (if they could convince her to join them, and thus far she’d been very nervous about any contact in case it got back to the Administration) could give them access to information about known rebel cells, and other scientists who might be willing to defect. The archive-computers had been recently upgraded to ones without tarrial cells, meaning the only way into them was through the archivists.

“We could lose her, if Avon doesn’t show up,” Soolin pointed out unnecessarily. “I don’t care, obviously, but he will when or, rather, _if_ he remembers that he does.”

“I do hate to interrupt,” Avon said from behind Tarrant, in a tone that implied that, conversely, he’d hated for so much time to pass without hearing his own voice, “but if I understand the situation correctly, it could be easily resolved if you simply asked me to attend in Avon’s place.”

“What was that?” Soolin said.

“A terrible idea,” Tarrant said, “but perhaps the best one we have. I’ll get back to you when I’m sure.” He turned back to Avon, who was smiling lazily. “Maura has met Avon- _you_ before, so you’d have to cut back on _that_ ,” he said, indicating the smile, “and as much of the fruitiness as you can. Understand?”

“Of course,” Avon said. He gave another radiant smile. “How could I not?”

*

“That was _completely_ unacceptable,” Tarrant shouted about four hours later.

“Now I _can_ explain-” Avon said, trying to gather himself.

“What did he do this time?” Vila said from where he’d been snoozing next to the Scorpio’s teleport controls.

“I merely made,” Avon said, “a minor miscalcu-”

“He _kissed_ her,” Tarrant explained, rather than allowing that sentence to continue. He was pleased to hear he was no longer shouting. “He _kissed_ her. Right in the middle of negotiations.” He pressed a hand against his temple in an attempt to get it to stop throbbing.

“I admit I made a mistake,” Avon began again. “But, you see, if you’d _told_ me about her recently deceased husband, then I would never have-”

“That is _not_ the only reason someone wouldn’t want to be kissed, aggressively, in public, by a strange man,” Tarrant shouted. The brief island of calm had apparently evaporated again. “A strange man who then attempted to excuse his actions by claiming to _actually_ be someone else.”

He screwed his eyes shut, but he knew that when he opened them Avon would still be standing there, just as crazy as he had been before.

“I’m going to lie down,” Tarrant said and shut himself in one of the sleeping booths.

“Needless to say our negotiations with Maura failed quite dramatically,” Avon told Vila. “But I have an idea as to how I can make it up to you all.”

Vila made a face. “Don’t,” he advised.

*

“What is it?” Tarrant said without looking up from the work he and Dayna were doing on the heating system.

Temperatures had dropped recently on Xenon and they’d realised the base no longer had an operational central heating system. Avon had destroyed everything very effectively, and now refused to remember how to put it back. Dayna’s experience was primarily in weaponry, but she was making good progress. Tarrant had very little experience at all, but he was good at following instructions, and Dayna needed extra hands.

“A list,” Avon said.

“I can see it’s a list,” Tarrant said, handing Dayna a thinner screwdriver. “What is it a list _of_?”

“A list,” Avon explained, “of scientists and political figures who are currently neutral _or_ likely to defect if given a small push in the right direction. I used Orac to help me construct it. A simply _fascinating_ machine.”

“That’s one word for it,” Dayna muttered as Tarrant condescended to turn and take the list from Avon’s outstretched hand.

“They’re in order,” Avon said. “Most likely to join us at the top, least likely at - well, I’m sure you can work that out for yourself.”

“So, what you’re saying is that we should start at the bottom?” Tarrant said, and exchanged a grin with Dayna.

He was cautiously optimistic about this gift. Anything Avon had constructed with Orac would probably not be entirely valueless, even if Avon had been insane at the time. And even if it _was_ valueless, it wasn’t likely to actually hurt anyone. It was just a list. He’d expected worse.

“Very droll,” Avon said. “As well as simply producing these names, I have also predicted that Mrs Vungard Vilstrom – see, there she is at the top of our list – would be best approached within the next thirty six hours. Orac has removed almost everything from her primary bank account-”

“He’s _what_?” Tarrant said flatly. “Avon, you can’t-”

“Consequently, she should be highly amenable to a _bribe_ ,” Avon said as though he hadn’t heard this. “I’ve already asked the Slave computer to ready Scorpio for launch. Care to join me?”

Tarrant’s mouth was still hanging open as Avon turned and glided serenely out of the room.

Dayna gave him a slight nudge. “You’d better go after him,” she said, and Tarrant staggered to his feet and half ran, half stumbled, in the direction of the launch pad.

*

After a few weeks of this, Tarrant took to forbidding Avon to leave the base. And then when this didn’t work, he took to locking Avon in his room. Unfortunately this didn’t work very well either.

“The problem is,” Vila explained when they found Avon on Scorpio’s flight deck, three hours away from the base, “that all the systems are programmed to respond to his voice. I did what I could, but he did a good job. Probably didn’t want us to turn on him.”

“As if we would!” Dayna said.

“Well, you try and convince him,” Vila said. “But you’ll have to build a time machine first. To go back to before he was crazy, I mean - and I think _two_ impossible things might be beyond even you, Dayna.”

“Now I know you didn’t want me to come,” Avon began.

“What gave it away?” Tarrant said sarcastically. “Was it the locked door, or the manacles? Actually, yes, that’s a point - what happened to the manacles, Soolin? Programmed to his voice as well, were they?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He must have got out of them.”

“I can _see_ that,” Tarrant snapped. “What I want to know is _how_ he managed to get out of them. Were they locked?”

“Yes, they were locked,” Soolin said.

“Well, it must have been _something_ ,” Tarrant said, hearing his voice getting louder and louder as his patience got closer and closer to snapping. “Did you, perhaps, leave the _key_ right next to him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Soolin said sharply.

“Careful, Tarrant,” Avon said. “Shouting at Soolin is not the way to win her heart. If you want her to return your love-”

“ _What_?” Tarrant demanded, turning on him. “What are you -? I love _Dayna_.”

“You’ve never said,” Dayna pointed out to Tarrant. She considered it. “Not that I mind.”

“Another strategy successfully executed,” Avon said smugly. “No need to thank me, although I hope I’ll be invited to your wedding.”

He didn’t see Tarrant’s fist coming, and hit the flight deck floor with a very satisfying crack.

*

Nobody ever knocked on the outside doors to Xenon Base. That was because the crew all had automatic access, and the only other people who might be wandering around outside the base were the Hommiks. And they didn’t knock.

Nevertheless-

“I told you,” Vila said, pointing accusingly at the door. “Didn’t I tell you? Someone’s out there.”

There was another polite rat-a-tat-tatting from outside and everyone jumped. Everyone that is except for Avon, who was off investigating alternative methods of bringing down the Federation, since the scientific and military recruitment-drive seemed to be going so badly.

There was another knock.

“I’ll answer it, shall I?” Soolin said. She arched an eyebrow, and when nobody else stepped up, she pulled her gun from its holster and approached the door.

She pressed the release button and the door slid open.

“We’re not interested in door-to-door prothletising, or whatever you’re selling,” she told the man at the door. “If you’ve come about the noise, we’ll try and keep it down in future, but I can’t promise anything.”

“How thoughtful,” the visitor said with a smile. He was a tall man, with blond hair and rather extraordinary eyelashes. “But actually it’s nothing of the sort. We’re not neighbours, but I happened to be in the area – on purpose – and I wondered if I might be able to speak to Kerr Avon. My name is-”

“Nik Carnell?” Soolin said, holstering her gun. “Yes, I thought you might be round at some point. You’d better come in.”

*

“I got wind of it some time ago,” Carnell explained, smiling up at Dayna as she put a cup of tea down in front of him. “But I’m afraid I didn’t think to do anything about it until now. You see, people have begun to attribute his strategies to me. There is talk that I’ve... shall we say, lost my touch. And while that’s certainly useful in some ways, I do also find it rather galling.”

“You should try living with him,” Vila said.

“Which one?” Dayna said. “The old him, or the new him? They’re both as bad as each other.”

“No,” Tarrant said firmly. “They aren’t.” There was a moment of silence in which Tarrant could tell that the others agreed with him but were reluctant to say it out loud, even when Avon wasn’t in the room and would probably never find out.

“No offence,” Tarrant told Carnell, “but we’d like the old Avon back.”

Weeks ago, he’d suggested Carnell might be trying to infiltrate their base. Avon’s impression of Carnell had laughed at that suggestion, so Tarrant didn’t bother to make it here. Besides, Carnell had already managed the difficult part, namely finding Xenon and the base. If he’d wanted to destroy them all, he clearly could have done so without letting them know he was onto them.

Tarrant felt suddenly very small, and very tired. He was tired of this fight he hadn’t chosen, and tired of leading while the absence of the previous leader hung over the group. Presumably this was how Avon had felt when Blake hadn’t come back.

“No easier said than done,” Carnell said with a smile that seemed to imply he knew everything Tarrant had just been thinking. He finished his tea and set it down on the table, rotating the handle around so that it was parallel with the edge of the table. “Now - I have an idea already about what might be the root of his trauma, but I’d like to speak to Orac before I speak to Avon. Just to confirm a few of the finer details-”

“Good luck,” Vila said. “Orac’s not talking to anyone. Avon told him not to, you see, long before he went crazy. We haven’t been able to get so much of a hint as to what all this is about.”

“Ah,” Carnell said kindly. “But then - none of you are pyschostrategists, are you?”

He smiled again, stood and, without asking, walked to the teleport area where Orac was sitting on the desk, whirring to itself.

*

As a general rule, Carnell liked mirrors. They were useful and functional, and generally showed him looking younger than he actually was. Avon was not an accurate mirror, though, and Carnell found it rather painful to look at him. In Avon’s version of himself, he saw his own smugness, his vanity and his languor all reflected back at him, but distorted and magnified.

It was no real comfort to know that Avon’s Carnell was only created from third-party descriptions, without any of the richness and depth of the real Carnell. No, it just implied that this was how the world saw him. Smug, vain, languid. Well, certainly there _were_ elements of those qualities in him, Carnell admitted to himself, but there were other things too. Charm, wit and intelligence, for example. From his wider research, Carnell suspected that Avon had his own share of all of those qualities too, but he’d hidden most of himself away. It was genuinely very sad.

 _Empathy_ , Carnell thought, as he was shown into the room Avon was sitting in. _That’s another good quality of mine._ And then he laughed at himself, pushed his vanity away for the moment, and got on with the job at hand.

“My dear fellow,” he said, sitting down on the chair opposite Avon and beaming at him, “I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet you at last.”

Avon looked wary – presumably he thought Carnell had come to tell him which one of them was Nik Carnell and which of them wasn’t, so Carnell gave him a reassuring cue, “You are... Nik Carnell, aren’t you?”

“Currently,” Avon said. “Though I used to look rather a lot like you. Are you-?”

“ _Avon_ ,” Carnell said. “Yes, I am. Kerr Avon, computer genius and infamous rebel leader.”

He’d decided, on balance, not to bother replicating Avon’s speech patterns on the grounds that it wasn’t his speciality and probably wasn’t necessary. Avon would make allowances for him, as long as Carnell told him roughly what he expected to hear. To that effect, Carnell said,

“I still don’t understand how it happened, but a few weeks ago our minds were swapped. I’ve been trying to get back here, but without knowing how or why we’d been swapped, I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t leading Servalan right to you.”

“I did _try_ to tell them,” Avon said. He smiled and shook his head. “But they never listen.”

“How true,” Carnell said. “Still –no harm done. Now that we’re together, two geniuses in our separate fields, I’m certain we’ll be able to resolve this. Now,” he said before Avon could make a suggestion of his own, “I think probably the first stage in the swapping-back process would be to think back to the last thing you remember doing while you were in this body, and for me to think about the last thing I remember doing while I was in your body. I mean, my body. I think there may a clue there, as to what happened. Though it’s all speculation, of course.”

“Interestingly, I had the same idea,” Avon said, in another attempt to take credit for Carnell’s work. Carnell smiled reassuringly at him. “But unfortunately I have no memory of the event.”

“Ah, well, I do,” Carnell said. “Perhaps it will help if I relate my experience to you. You see, I’d just spoken to Orac about Blake-”

“ _Blake_?” Avon said sharply. “What about him?”

“Blake has been missing for some time,” Carnell explained, watching Avon’s face closely. “And I’d asked Orac to try and find him. This was because, although I had previously claimed to be glad Blake was gone, I actually missed him a good deal. The burden of leadership was lying heavily on me, and I missed his certainty and his goodness. I wanted him back on a personal and a professional level. Quite desperately.

“So,” Carnell continued, “we come back to the day in question. After months of searching, Orac had finally told me that he’d found Blake, and that Blake-”

“Blake was now a bounty hunter,” Avon said hoarsely.

“Yes,” Carnell said kindly. “That is _exactly_ what Orac said. You’re very good at this. How did you know? Not that it matters at the moment. What matters is that Orac left something out of its analysis. It’s only a computer, after all. It reads data: vidcast records, passenger manifests, that sort of thing. It doesn’t analyse human beings or human emotions, though, I agree, it does appear to. But really, when it comes down to it, that sort of thing is best left to pyschostrategists, like you and- well, the other members of your profession. Any of them would have been able to tell you what you and I already know, Nik – which is that Roj Blake could never be a bounty hunter.”

“His memories could have been erased,” Avon said brokenly. “And new ones implanted. It _has_ happened before.”

“Orac has no record of that happening on this occasion,” Carnell said. “And in this case, I believe you can trust Orac. If it _had_ happened, the Federation would have publicised what he had become. They haven’t, so Blake is not a bounty hunter. He is simply posing as one in order to recruit new members of the rebellion.”

Avon’s shoulders seemed to cave in on themselves, and he caught his head in his hands. He shuddered for a moment, his breathing catching in his throat, and then he looked back up.

“You’re sure about this?” he demanded.

“Well,” Carnell said modestly, “I _am_ Nik Carnell.”

“I suppose that makes me... Kerr Avon,” Avon said. He breathed in slowly through his nose. “A man who has made a complete fool of himself for the last four weeks. If not longer.”

Carnell gave Avon’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Welcome back.”

*

“No, I wouldn’t bother with Zukan,” Carnell said a few hours later as he prepared to leave. “He is, what those of us in the profession call, a complete psychopath. I expect he’ll sell you out to the lovely Commissioner once he’s ascertained the location of your base. She’ll kill him fairly quickly, of course, but that won’t be much consolation to any of you with your base in smithereens.

“No, if I were you I’d go straight to Blake on Gauda Prime, convince him you’re on his side and that he needs to evacuate. That will be difficult – he’ll probably want to stay until it’s returned to normal legal status – but I think you can do it.”

“An official prediction?” Avon said wryly.

“A hope,” Carnell said, “based only on the strength of your character. An official prediction would be much more expensive. This is on the house.” He smiled round at all of the others, and pressed the door-release button. “As a thank you for putting up with me for the past month.”

He raised a hand in farewell, and strode out into the Xenon wilderness. The door shut behind him.

“What a nice man,” Dayna said.

“Very nice,” Soolin said.

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Vila said.

“I think we all are,” Tarrant said, and grinned as Avon glared at him from across the room. “Shall I go and get the Scorpio ready for launch, then, Avon?”

Avon considered this for a moment. Then he said, “Since the rest of you seem to have failed spectacularly to recruit anyone in the time I was away-”

Dayna made an incredulous noise, Tarrant laughed, Vila gaped at him, and Soolin said, “Actually there _were_ reasons.”

Avon held up a hand. “Since that has happened, for whatever reason, none of us have anything better to do at the moment.” He glanced round at each of his indigent crew and smiled. “So in answer to your question, Tarrant – yes. Ready Scorpio for launch. Let’s go and get Blake back." 


End file.
